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Meta-Analysis
. 2011 May 6;6(5):e19604.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0019604.

Huangqi injection (a traditional Chinese patent medicine) for chronic heart failure: a systematic review

Shufei Fu  1 , Junhua Zhang, Francesca Menniti-Ippolito, Xiumei Gao, Francesca Galeotti, Marco Massari, Limin Hu, Boli Zhang, Rita Ferrelli, Alice Fauci, Fabio Firenzuoli, Hongcai Shang, Ranieri Guerra, Roberto Raschetti
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

Huangqi injection (a traditional Chinese patent medicine) for chronic heart failure: a systematic review

Shufei Fu et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: Chronic heart failure (CHF) is a global public health problem. Therefore, novel and effective drugs that show few side-effects are needed. Early literature studies indicated that Huangqi injection is one of the most commonly used traditional Chinese patent medicines for CHF in China. As a large number of clinical studies has been carried out and published, it is essential to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of Huangqi injection. Therefore, we carried out this systematic review under the support of the framework of the Joint Sino-Italian Laboratory (JoSIL).

Objectives: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of Huangqi injection for CHF according to the available scientific knowledge.

Methods: An extensive search including PubMed, EMBASE, CBM, the Cochrane Library and Chinese literature databases was performed up to July 2008. Clinical trials regarding Huangqi injection for the treatment of CHF were searched for, irrespective of languages. The quality of each trial was assessed according to the Cochrane Reviewers' Handbook 5.0, and RevMan 5.0 provided by the Cochrane Collaboration and STATA 9.2 were used for data analysis.

Results: After selection of 1,205 articles, 62 RCTs and quasi-RCTs conducted in China and published in Chinese journals were included in the review. The methodological quality of the trials was low. In most trials inclusion and exclusion criteria were not specified. Furthermore, only one study evaluated the outcomes for drug efficacy after an adequate period of time. For these reasons and because of the different baseline characteristics we did not conduct a meta-analysis.

Conclusions: Although available studies are not adequate to draw a conclusion on the efficacy and safety of Huangqi injection (a traditional Chinese patent medicine), we hope that our work could provide useful experience on further studies on Huangqi injections. The overall level of TCM clinical research needs to be improved so that the efficacy of TCM can be evaluated by the international community and possibly some TCM can enter into the international market.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Flow diagram of the article selection for this study.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Effective rate analysis based on improvements of classification in NYHA.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Data analysis of left ventricular ejection fraction.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Funnel plots of ERR (A) and LVEF Mean Difference (B).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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